


Roads We've Traveled, Dreams We've Chased

by unwhithered



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Reincarnation, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:14:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22913050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: According to the legends, Witchers don’t have soulmates. Storytellers disagree about the cause but all, of course, are wrong. If destiny was just they would be right.-------Geralt's soulmate dies and is reincarnated over and over again. The first time it is a blessing. By the fifth, Geralt punches his soulmate in the stomach and tries to leave him on the road.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 22
Kudos: 332





	Roads We've Traveled, Dreams We've Chased

**Author's Note:**

> I'm working my way through all of the dorky tropes I've never tried out before I guess. Combination soulmate au/reincarnation - all you really need to know is that Geralt is very old and very tired and Jaskier has no fucking idea what's going on.
> 
> Warning: somewhat suicidal thoughts.

According to the legends, Witchers don’t have soulmates. Storytellers disagree about the cause - some say Witchers choose only boys born without soulmarks to join their guild, others argue that the trials strip away the soul bond just as they steal away Witchers’ emotions. Whatever the reason, all agree that the lack of something as fundamental as a soulmate serves to make Witchers even less human. All are, of course, wrong.

If destiny was just they would be right, but in two hundred years walking the Continent Geralt has learned that destiny cares little for petty human concepts such as justice and fairness. Even those who do not fight it suffer. Those who do…who is to say they suffer any more?

Geralt has tried it both ways. He has followed destiny’s call, found his soulmate in the vast wilds of the continent, consummated their bond and walked side by side across the world. He has felt love and connection and the bliss of being utterly understood, down to his very bones. And he has lost it. Over and over again, he has lost it, holding his soulmate in his arms as they died, his soulmark scarring into an ugly twisted thing. 

Over and over, he has been found by them again.

The first time it is a blessing. By the fifth, Geralt punches his soulmate in the stomach and tries to leave him on the road.

\---------

There is one long, horrible moment after Geralt wakes in the cave at the Edge of the World, his skin sparking everywhere that his soulmate is pressed up against him, when he wonders if it would be better for them both to just die here. He struggles against the restraints out of habit more than desire, makes a brief and pitiful show of trying to escape. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. Elves know the strength of Witchers well, and it must be elves that captured them. 

“This is the part where we escape,” Jaskier says hopefully, wiggling against the ropes so that their knuckles bump together behind their backs. Geralt can hear his sharp, surprised inhale at every brush of skin. Of course Jaskier is surprised. They’re always surprised. Geralt is not exactly anyone’s romantic image of their soulmate. He closes his eyes for just a moment and feels the bond tingle up his arms and along his spine and thinks - perhaps the cycle will finally end if they die together. 

“This is the part where they kill us,” he growls in reply, but he is hopeful too. He’s so damn tired. Perhaps he will finally be allowed to rest. Or perhaps they will both be reincarnated and it will start all over again, but for a little while he won’t have to remember it all. Even a few decades of respite from the ache in his chest he has woken with every day for a hundred and fifty years would be welcome. 

But then Jaskier is doing what he has done best in every life - making trouble for himself and by extension for Geralt. His Elder is terrible, but his bratty comments are painfully familiar, and Geralt defends him before he can think. “Leave off! He’s just a bard.” Though the electric jolts up his arms every time Jaskier squirms and their skin touches remind him painfully that Jaskier is not  _ just _ anything. He is everything. He has been everything for nearly two hundred years and too many lives.

Geralt grinds his teeth, trying to think past the humming beneath his skin and the burn of the soulmark on his hip. The concussion makes it hard to focus his eyes and his ears at the same time, the conversation happening around him is a dull buzz punctuated by the pain of intermittent and frankly unimpressive blows. All he knows is that for all his thoughts of dying he has to get Jaskier out of here. Has to keep him safe. When the elf gets close enough he slams his head against her and smiles bloodily when she collapses backward, though the throbbing in his head only worsens and blurs the shape of the Sylvan and the new elf he brings.

“You were stealing for them,” he growls, impressed despite himself.

“I felt for them. They were forced out of Dol Blathanna.”

“Forced out? No, they chose--” 

Good gods, his soulmate is stupid this time around. But no - he’s young, and human, and there are fewer elves left in the world than there were last time he was reborn. Geralt opens his mouth to chastise him for his ignorance only to be cut off by this King of nothing but dust and a dying people.

“Do you know anyone that would choose to leave their home? To starve? To have a Sylvan steal for them?” A sad tale, but one Geralt has heard too many times before. He cannot weep for every elf or dwarf or dragon driven from the world by human cruelty, just as he cannot weep for every human child killed by monstrous beasts. (He cannot cry for any of them when he did not even shed a tear over Dandelion’s grave. His tears ran dry decades ago.)

“Toruviel, no one was supposed to get hurt.”

“What’s two humans in the ground when countless elves have died?”

Geralt bares his teeth and snarls like an animal. “One human. And you can let him go.”  _ Please _ ,  _ just let him go. _ Jaskier has died for him too many times already - died as Jaskier and Buttercup and Dandelion, died screaming and died coughing up blood and died with Geralt’s name on their lips. Every time, his fault. Let it finally be his turn.

“Then Posada will learn that we’ve been stealing. The humans will attack. Many will die...on both sides.”

“The lesser evil,” Geralt replies, the words burning in his mouth. Renfri flashes before his eyes, her eyes as glassy and lifeless as the soulmate he had buried two months before her. There are no lesser evils except, perhaps, the one that may spare Jaskier’s life. “No matter what you choose you’ll come out bloody, and hating yourself. Trust me.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t. This is necessary.”

“I understand.” Geralt grits his teeth and meets Filavandrel’s eyes and  _ refuses _ to beg. “As long as you understand that it won’t be long before you follow me in death.”

“Yes, because they pushed us from viable soil. Even chaos is polluted. Synthetically enhanced so humans can make magic.”

Geralt would roll his eyes if the action wouldn’t hurt so badly. “Chaos is the same as it’s always been.” Chaos is still dragging Jaskier back into the world, after all. If that stops someday, then he will know something has really changed. “Humans just adapted better.”

“You say adapt. I say destroy.”

“You are choosing to starve. You’re cutting off your ear to spite your face.” Geralt knows something about that kind of self destruction, after all. He tried to leave his soulmate on the road to spite destiny. He’ll do it again if they escape alive.

“You think this is about pride? My elders worked with humans and got robbed of all they had. And when they fought back they were slaughtered. The Great Cleansing, humans called it. I called it digging a mass grave for everyone I loved. And now the humans proudly watched these very fields grow, our babies fertilizer for their grain. I don’t wish to bury anyone else. I was once Filavandrel of the silver towers, now I’m Filavandrel of the Edge of the World. If I bring my people down from these mountains it will mean bowing to human sovereignty. They’ll make slaves of us. Pariahs of half-blood children.”

“Then go somewhere else. Rebuild. Get strong again. Show the humans that you are more than what they fear you to be.”

“Like you, Witcher?”

Geralt cannot help his bitter sneer. “I have learned to live with them. So that I may live.” Even when he does not want to. 

It used to be easier to live among them with his mate by his side. Having a soulmate softened him in the human’s eyes, at least sometimes, and made it easier to navigate their ever changing customs with each new generation. But it did no favors for his soulmate. Geralt may have adapted, but with every life they were trod upon, rejected,  _ lynched _ for being bonded with a monster. The humans unfortunate to be bonded to elves suffer much the same fate.

“Please, my king. There are others. A new generation. Evellien who wish to  _ fight _ . Let us take back what’s ours. Starting now.”

Geralt sighs. As steel scrapes against scabbard he lets his eyes drift shut. He doesn’t bother to struggle again. He leans back into Jaskier’s tense shoulders and breathes in the stench of his fear and hopes for the boy’s sake that it will be a swift death for them both.

“Wait!”

Geralt’s eyes snap back open and focus on the Sylvan, whose presence he had nearly forgotten. How inconvenient.

“Torque, stand aside!”

“The Witcher could have killed me. But he didn’t. He’s different, like us.”

Geralt lifts his chin stubbornly and meets Filavandrel’s eyes. “If you must kill me, I am ready. But the Sylvan’s right. Don’t call me human.” 

A blade flashes above him and Jaskier jerks sharply against the ropes once more. Geralt does not flinch. Death is the last unknown, the thing Jaskier never remembers and cannot explain when his memories of all the other lives return. Now he’ll finally find out.

Except that he doesn’t. The blade comes down on the ropes, freeing them.

How very disappointing.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr as [unwhithered](unwhithered.tumblr.com). There's like 10k worth of snippets of Geralt and various incarnations of Jaskier + background and musings about it posted there.
> 
> Fic title is from One Safe Place by Marc Cohn which is 100% The Song for this verse


End file.
